The ethnic cleansing happened when the bulldozer crew and security escorts were slaughtered, and only by Quarritch's prompting that it would be 'humane'. Selfridge was wanting to make a trade deal.
How is that at all relevant? How at all does that in any way excuse jack shit?
Imagine this scenario.
A US mining consortium goes into mexico without permission. They begin strip-mining the area around Mexico City without permission using the protection of a very large PMC. When a mexican spec ops team starts killing people and destroying equipment because they are being invaded by a private mining concern, does that then justify the ethnic cleansing of Mexico City?
Of course it fucking does not.
if the Na'Vi had made an agreement for the RDA to mine underneath, in exchange for say, food trade and reclamation of all already damaged areas, and survival of their hometree, then no fight would have happened beyond the fights they'd already had.
Again, how is this relevant? The Na'Vi wanted nothing to do with the humans or a trade agreement. That is all that is relevant. It does not matter what their reasons are, the land is theirs, the entire fucking planet is theirs, and arguably a part of them due to their physiological dependence on and participation in the global hive mind.
And does this mean that the Prawns from District 9 were in the wrong for coming to Johannesburg, and the humans there were in the right to put them in camps and generally starve them? Because the Prawns were violating their sovereignty and sentient rights? They clearly violated their airspace, were clearly in the wrong for coming when not invited, and deserved the human's treatment of them.
The Prawns were not invading. They crashed if I remember properly.
Or can you not understand the moral difference between a predatory mining consortium and refugees?
Protip: A ship that crashes on the shores of a country is entitled to humanitarian aid. Invaders in a private army are entitled to as much or as little fire and death as the invaded nation deigns to grant.
Which goes in contrast to him fighting in jungle campaigns, the bringing back of animals on the news, etc.
Bringing back the odd species is nothing in the face of the mass extinction were are currently precipitating. 37% of global land area is under permanent cultivation, we are fishing our oceans clean of life. Him fighting a jungle campaign only means that there is a patch of rainforest to be found in Africa or S. Asia.
Jake is complaining about the meal Grace made for him for his human body, not seeming to realize that synthetic food is necessary for either the huge population on Earth that has to rely on it, and/or for the human population there on Pandora that probably can't eat everything that comes from Pandora.
Holy leap of logic, batman. It means he takes some satisfaction in hunting his own food. Someone who likes to hunt does not necessarily reject agriculture.
The planet was a wonder...for the Na'Vi.
Or any biologist, chemist, physicist or geologist ever.
For the humans, it was a world that tried to kill them at all times in various ways
So does earth, we just evolved here.
The movie paints tribalism and getting back to nature as correct, and better for Sully than anything Earth could ever offer.
For Sully. A person who's native society screwed him over in every way imaginable, and was working on divesting the Na'Vi of their very existence. Of course he is going to like Na'Vi society more. He identifies with them.
And the Na'Vi psychopaths for killing anyone that's not them.
Killing an invader intent on global strip-mining. All we know is that by the time Sully gets there, the Na'Vi are unwilling to talk to humans and kill those they find. For obvious fucking reasons. We dont know the original state of communications whatsoever and you have provided zero evidence to support your position that they never permitted any sort of contact. Give me quotations to that effect if they exist.
Except that's not how it seemed to happen. They came by, saw what they thought were cows or monkeys and other wildlife, started mining, then found out among the cows, were farmers raising the cows. See my Narnia and the Animals example.
At which point they should have cut their losses and fucking left. With or without diplomatic contact of any kind. "Oh, you dont want to talk to us? Okay. We will leave then. Good luck to you, bye"
Instead, they could not reach an agreement, so strip mined anyway. They had zero respect for the wishes, rights, or even lives of the native population. Zero good faith.
At that point, they transitioned from "ignorant but forgivable fuck-up" to "the worst sort of imperialist"
Except that not reaching an agreement didn't prompt the genocide, it was the slaughter of the bulldozer crew and prodding by Quarritch that diplomacy had failed and that he was going to be 'humane' that led to them destroying the Hometree.
Who cares? Diplomacy fails, so genocide? Really?
If Saudi Arabia decides it no longer wants to sell us oil and kills the PMC we send to seize their oil wells by force, are we justified in nuking Mecca?
They don't seem to do this, they just seem to create the schools, the Avatar program, and send science teams to try and communicate with the Na'Vi.
WHILE MAINTAINING AN ACTIVE MINING OPERATION
At that point, whatever the Na'vi decide to do to them is justified short of gratuitous torture for shits and grins.
Except it's not their house, its their land. The point of no return is the destruction of the Hometree. That's the destruction of your house. Beforehand, they seem to be digging up your yard, and since there are no real talks between them and you, it becomes the Hatfields and McCoys, only about the trees and rocks instead of a hog.
Except it is their house. The Na'Vi depend on the god damned biosphere in its totality. They are hunter-gatherers with some animal husbandry and limited agriculture. They are also physiologically connected to the entire planet and communicate with it. By nature of that physiological connection, that tree is hive-mind sentient. The RDA was attacking the symbiot upon which they depend, if anything, the house analogy is not sufficient to describe that.
That is Selfridge's opening position, yes. A rather evil one.
No Shit.
The Na'Vi's are "Death to the Sky People", also a rather evil one.
No. It was not. According to your own argument, their opening position was "ignore the sky people". It changed to "kill them all" after the RDA started strip mining their planet. Killing people who are intent on strip-mining your planet out from under you is not evil. It is self defense.
Mass exile was fucking generous.
And given how much earth corporations *right now* resist lower-impact mining methods and reclamation, I very much doubt they could have been negotiated down from that their original position. They were not any more mustache twirling villains than the coal companies currently removing mountaintops in west virginia in that respect.